On Memorial Day weekend, 2 million people marched in protests against seed giant Monsanto for the purpose of bringing awareness to hazards from genetically modified food, which it and other companies manufacture. Organizer Tami Canal said protests were held in 436 cities in 52 countries.

Genetically modified plants are grown from genetically modified, or engineered, seeds, which are created to resist insecticides and herbicides so that crops can be grown to withstand a weed-killing pesticide or integrate a bacterial toxin that can ward off pests.

The Chicago Tribune reported that because genetically modified organisms are not listed on food or ingredient labels, few Americans realize they're eating GMO foods every day. Genetically modified crops constitute 93 percent of soy, 86 percent of corn and 93 percent of canola seeds planted in the U.S., and are used in about 70 percent of American processed food.

The Tribune reported that the Food and Drug Administration has permitted the sale and planting of genetically modified foods for 15 years and that the Obama administration has approved an "unprecedented number of genetically modified crops," such as ethanol corn, alfalfa and sugar beets. The Alliance for Natural Health USA added that the U.S. Department of Agriculture now wants to eliminate any regulatory controls from genetically altered corn and cotton.

And Monsanto, the world's largest seed-maker and a publicly traded American multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation, is leading the pro-GMO march and moving full steam ahead in being the No. 1 U.S. and global farm supplier.

CEO Hugh Grant said this past week, "We're in a growth mode, and with the combination of momentum in our core businesses and new layers of growth coming online from an increasingly global portfolio, we have the strategic drivers in place to continue our growth trajectory next year and beyond."

However, Europe's resistance against GMOs paid off, as Reuters reported last Friday that Monsanto is "not pushing for expansion of genetically modified crops in most of Europe, as opposition to its biotech seeds in many countries remains high."

And The Washington Post also reported the same day that South Korea recently joined Japan in suspending imports of U.S. wheat after an experimental and unapproved strain of GM wheat, designed to resist the deadly effects of Monsanto's most popular herbicide and weed killer, Roundup, was discovered growing on an Oregon farm. (Just this last Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found the rogue Monsanto wheat sprouts in the Beaver State, when a farmer who was attempting to wipe out a field by spraying Roundup couldn't kill the wheat crops.)

There's good reason that most European countries, Japan, and South Korea are resisting GMO crops. Business columnist Al Lewis summarized the dilemma Monsanto faces in his column for Dow Jones Newswires: "For Monsanto, it comes down to saving the 9 billion people expected to populate the planet by 2050. Monsanto is the company that allows farmers to grow more food with less land, water and energy. But it is also the company that brought us products we now know were far more dangerous than advertised, including the insecticide DDT, the toxic industrial chemicals known as PCBs and the Vietnam-Era defoliant Agent Orange, which poisoned our own soldiers with dioxins. Monsanto also brought us saccharine -- sweet, yet artificial, and known to cause cancer in laboratory rats."

The Alliance for Natural Health USA cited the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and one of the first scientists to speak out about the dangers of genetically engineered foods: "Recombinant DNA technology (genetic engineering) faces our society with problems unprecedented, not only in the history of science, but of life on the Earth. ... Now whole new proteins will be transposed overnight into wholly new associations, with consequences no one can foretell, either for the host organism or their neighbors. ... For going ahead in this direction may not only be unwise but dangerous. Potentially, it could breed new animal and plant diseases, new sources of cancer, novel epidemics."

So instead of eradicating the need for insecticides and herbicides, genetically modified plants eventually could warrant stronger and more intense pesticides in order to outwit and overcome superbugs and greater strains of diseases. And who's to say what GMOs will do -- now or in generations -- inside our bodies as we consume them on a greater scale and they become a part of the bacteria in our digestive tracts?

With more and more U.S. foods being grown, manufactured and imported from places like South America and Eastern Europe -- the precise areas outside the U.S. where Monsanto's biotech seeds are gaining their greatest foothold, food imports are quickly becoming a recipe for disaster. Remember, too, much of the GM crop grown around the world is used for livestock feed, so there's more than one way for GMOs to be ingested in your diet, such as from meat and dairy products.

Equally alarming is a study that was just published in the journal Neurology. According to Medical Daily, a review of 104 studies conducted around the world revealed that exposure to pesticides, insecticides, weed-killers, fungicides, solvents, etc., increased the risk of developing Parkinson's disease by 30 to 80 percent.

Dr. Emanuele Cereda -- author of the study, by researchers from the IRCCS University Hospital San Matteo Foundation in Pavia, Italy -- told the British newspaper Daily Mail: "We didn't study whether the type of exposure, such as whether the compound was inhaled or absorbed through the skin and the method of application, such as spraying or mixing, affected Parkinson's risk. However, our study suggests that the risk increases in a dose response manner as the length of exposure to these chemicals increases."

Eat local and organic, period. And fight GMOs invading U.S. food industries and American homes.

We can feed the world or we can go “all natural” whatever the means. Wheat rust is natural, rye ergot is natural, locusts, flies, worms and other vermin are natural. I have absolutely no concerns or worries about GMO’s. in one sense or another every food is genetically modified either in a lab or by selective breeding.

4
posted on 06/04/2013 5:06:00 AM PDT
by muir_redwoods
(Don't fire until you see the blue of their helmets)

“Eat local and organic, period. And fight GMOs invading U.S. food industries and American homes.”

Local? That would really limit your diet if you live in the desert. I knew a guy who worked for an international meat company. They “harvested” 12 million chickens a day, except for holidays and weekends. That’s why chicken is dirt cheap and universally available. Their chickens come from farms that have one million chickens each in cages containing 100k chickens. So are we supposed to eat only free range chicken? How long does it take to come to market on organic feed? How much does it cost?

The same is true for everything. If we go to all local all “natural” (what is that? EVERYTHING we eat is the product of hundreds of years of selection) how much food will we grow?

The result these activists are looking for is eliminating a large swath of the population through starvation.

People who want to eat organic are perfectly free to do so, and pay the premium. I just wish the organic fetishists would leave the rest of us alone.

The current argument, at least in the U.S., is largely about labelling. We label mostly for risk. The organic lobby wants GM products labelled to suggest to low-information consumers that there is a risk — or they wouldn’t be labelled, right? But GM crops are tested before they are commercialized, so the imputation of risk is just part of a big scare campaign by organic producers who have difficulty competing on price.

In a rational world, it would make much more sense to label organically for consumer fraud.

Every day lebenteengazillion tons of bird poop waft down from on high ~ infesting everything beneath them with insect parts, viruses, bacteria, and every other substance you can imagine birds manage to swallow, produce, or otherwise stick in their beaks!

Free range chickens, surrounded by miles of tasty bird food snacks, acquire many times more than their fair share of wild bird poop.

All crops are genetically modified. The original strains have changed over the years naturally. The only difference is that companies make the seeds they distribute unable to be used for the next year’s crop, requiring the farmer to keep going back to the company for new seeds. This has been a big gripe and underlies many of the protests

There is a world of difference between what Mendel did and what Monsanto does. Genetic engineering is basicly an ungodly process. God created things to reproduce after their own kind. Genetic engineering violates that order just as much as homosexual unions violate marriage.

I’m shocked at the FReepers on here who are a-ok with laboratory created foods & seem to be in denial about the endemic medical problems that have arisen since our diets changed to one that’s more highly-processed & less natural.

And for those who want to claim that GMOs exist in nature through hundreds of years of selective & cross-breeding, they really ought to get a clue. Something happening like that naturally in nature is far different from some mad scientist in a lab splicing viral DNA into a crop.

18
posted on 06/04/2013 5:48:23 AM PDT
by surroundedbyblue
(Why am I both pro-life & pro-gun? Because both positions defend the innocent and protect the weak.)

The article raises fears about GMOs but doesn’t provide a single documented example of an injury from GMOs.

Lots of baseless “probably” and “could”. Several examples of prior Monsanto products that were not food related (Agent Orange and PCBs) and others that are criticized because of highly flawed studies (DDT and sacharine).

Your argument is complete BS. How much monospeciated chicken poop do you think chickens get in a CAFO chicken house? Free range or pasterued chickens are demonstrably better, and cleaner. GMO’s are bad news. Do some research.

And stuffing THAT many chickens into cages breeds diseases & infections that can only be controlled with antibiotics. Furthermore, how many of those chickens have been fed growth hormones so that they are ready to “harvest” at a younger age?

Little girls are starting their periods in kindergarten & boys are growing boobs while becoming increasingly more effeminate. You’re totally convinced beyond a doubt that the administration of these drugs in the food chain has no impact on human health?? Rrrrriiiiight.

You can keep your Frankenchickens. I’ll take a natural, free-range bird any day.

21
posted on 06/04/2013 5:51:19 AM PDT
by surroundedbyblue
(Why am I both pro-life & pro-gun? Because both positions defend the innocent and protect the weak.)

The problem is that “GMO” varies considerably in relative risk. Some modifications are totally benign, a transfer of genes from within the genus for reasons of productivity. What is the problem with a fruit tree designed to bear at a particular time of year?

28
posted on 06/04/2013 5:59:09 AM PDT
by Carry_Okie
(An economy is not a zero-sum game, but politics usually is.)

What scares me is how Greenpeace/Sierra Club propaganda has infiltrated FR over the past few years. The same people who publish these so-called non-peer reviewed science studies (to be generous), are the same people who push the man-made global warming agenda. This is one of the progressive favourite agenda who want to push down population growth, especially in Africa and in the third world.

Define natural?? I don’t eat processed foods whose ingredient lust I can’t pronounce. The food I eat either came from the ground or had a mother. And the stuff that came from the ground is organic & non-GMO. The meat I buy is grass fed, free range, or wild caught fish. I don’t eat beef that’s been fed corn (GMO) because its high in omega 6, I don’t buy farm-raised fish because its filthy & laden with pharmaceuticals, and I eat free range chicken for the same reason.

33
posted on 06/04/2013 6:08:56 AM PDT
by surroundedbyblue
(Why am I both pro-life & pro-gun? Because both positions defend the innocent and protect the weak.)

Um, wrong. The people creating & pushing GMOs are the progressives & the population control antagonists. Just look who is invested in Monsanto, how their lobby spends its $$, and where their political affiliations lie.

I once believed as you do, but gradually came to realize that there is a credible scientific case for greater caution in regard to GMO foods, both as to their environmental impacts and as to their effects on human health. Notably, with the potential of safe and reliable traditional breeding techniques to improve crop yields not yet been exhausted, it should not be thought that the choice is between GMOs and starvation.

There's a bacteria in South America that is constantly at work creating new species of insects. It works the old fashioned way by changing the shape of their sex organs.

There are various molds, fungi and bacteria at work constantly reworking plant genomes. Then there's hard radiation from outerspace ~ hits this place all the time ~ sometimes it zip zaps the reproductive regions and there you go ~ another species, or variety, or harmful mutation!

I’m not saying that apples cannot be grown organically, but to attempt to do so would take a highly labor intensive crop and make it even more so. And you would have to accept a high rejection rate.

I have experience, and you ask me to seek out commonsense. You speak from a viewpoint of ignorance.

In an earlier post, you attributed endemic medical problems to a change in diet. What is the basis for this statement?

Perhaps you need to do a little research before you reach a baseless conclusion. For example:
- have you taken into account the increase in lifespan (lifespan has increased 10 years since 1960, from 67 to 77)? As we have gained greater knowledge about life risks, things like herat disease kill less people, allowing us to live longer and become more susceptible to diseases that primarily afflict older people, such as Parkinson’s disease.
- Or possibly that medical science has greatly increased its ability to detect medical issues and label them, whereas before they were attributed to natural causes?
- In 1960, food represented 30% of an average American family’s budget. Now it is 12%.

In the meantime, why won’t your busybody buddies leave me and others alone? I’m sure if I had the time and inclination I could find many studies that would point to the safety of GMOs. And there is no doubt that GMO crops can be grown faster, using less water, land and pesticides.

So, to turn the argument around, what are ya’ll trying to do? Starve the little chill’ren?

When my kids were still at home, and they needed chores to keep them occupied, we raised a lot of “free range” chickens. I wonder how many of the folks singing the praises of these birds have any idea as to what a chicken eats when left to its own devices.

i don't eat wheat, barley or rye since they contain poisonous substances which will kill me. Doesn't matter if they're GMO or just like they were when first developed up in the Golan 8,000 years ago.

Then, I hold off on all milk fresh from the cow, or even if it's been irradiated. Can't digest that stuff so it must be processed as acidophilous or cheese aged at least 9 months or yoghurt. The penalties for drinking fresh, whole milk are too numerous to mention!

My favorite starch additive for making wheat-gluten free bread is TAPIOCA ~ it's stretchy, just like wheat, but you have to process it to eat it since it comes with a couple of poisons ~ but they are easily removed unlike the poisonous gluten in wheat ~ which simply cannot be removed easily enough.

Someday I hope to see a wheat-gluten free wheat product on the market ~ it'll have to come about through some serious GMO of course.

Then there's beef ~ those poor animals have been bred and rebred so many times they're as far removed from an Aurochs as a tadpole. Better to hunt down your own wild pigs. They eat a natural diet!

Hybrid seed come about through a natural process within the same species. GMO’s are forced into existence through a totally unnatural process combining different species with no thought or comprehension of the consequences.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.